


A Murderer's Mistake

by lbk_princen



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: GHOST STUFF, i take no responsibility for emotional damage caused by this fic, uhhhhhh idk whelk sucks but that's why he's an interesting character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 05:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16528133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbk_princen/pseuds/lbk_princen
Summary: Since returning to Aglionby, Whelk had seen Czerny a total of six times.///One morning, before classes begin, Whelk receives a visit from an old.... accomplice.





	A Murderer's Mistake

**Author's Note:**

> This has been rotting in my docs for literally years and I figured it was time to air it out. I imagined this taking place right before the first book.

Since returning to Aglionby, Whelk had seen Czerny a total of six times. They were all fleeting glances; a flash of spiky hair here, a glimpse of big ears and awkward hands there. Once when he was pulling into the parking lot, he saw Czerny sitting on the stone wall of the front gate, hollow eyes boring into Whelk. Then he wasn't there anymore. Not suddenly, like a wink out of existence, more like Whelk's brain tried to convince his eyes that what he'd seen had never been true in the first place.

Whelk tried to ignore it. He told himself the visions were nothing more than the product of a lack of sleep and a guilty conscience; because he _was_ guilty, in that it was his fault Czerny was dead. He wasn't guilty in that he regretted it. He only regretted that nothing had come out of it.   
  
It was early morning, too early for anyone but the school caretakers to be roaming the halls of Aglionby Academy. The caretakers, Whelk, and Czerny.   
  
Whelk sauntered down the corridor with his bag on his shoulder and his keys in his hand. To his left was a stretch of lockers. He could easily pick out which one had belonged to him all those years ago. Czerny's was only a few lockers down. Whelk passed the lockers, not glancing at his. It was occupied by some snotty Aglionby brat now, anyway.   
  
Behind him, Whelk heard a locker slam shut. The noise startled him, and he whipped around. Heart racing, he scanned the hall, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The hall was empty, the lockers still and silent. It seemed colder than it had been just moments ago, and yet Whelk felt sweat begin to bead on the back of his neck. He turned back around to continue walking, but was halted once again. He was too stunned by the sight of Czerny to notice his keys slipping from his hand.   
  
_You're dead,_ Whelk thought, the words pounding against the inside of his skull repeatedly. He couldn’t make his voice work to say the words aloud.   
  
Quietly, impossibly, Czerny said, "Yes." He was the same, and yet different, as the last time Whelk saw him alive. Aglionby sweater rumpled, bits of leaf litter clinging to his pants, hair a bleached blond disaster. He was paperwhite and paper-thin; he looked like he would blow away in a breeze. He wore an expression that was one part anger and three parts misery. His eyes were vast and empty, and his fingers were crooked oddly where they hung at his sides. There was a gaping hole in his cheek where the bone had shattered and burst out of his face.   
  
Seeing it reminded Whelk of how the skateboard felt in his hands, how his heart had pounded and his muscles trembled from the adrenaline. He remembered the blood pooling around Czerny's head as he writhed, mouth working open and closed like the gasps of a suffocating fish. He remembered the way Czerny's pain-glazed eyes had managed to find him and pin him in place for the last few seconds before the twitching stopped.   
  
The same stare held him again, and he watched with growing horror as Czerny began to look less like a boy and more like the rotting bones still laying in the forest somewhere on the ley line. The lips thinned and the skin shriveled, revealing the teeth and destroyed cheekbone underneath. The shoulders hunched, the hands curled, the eyes got darker and darker and wider and wider until Whelk was sure they’d suck him in to choke on the emptiness.

“Seven years,” whispered the thing that looked like Czerny but wasn’t - or perhaps it did not look like Czerny but was. “It’s been seven years, Whelk.”

Whelk didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure speech was within his realm of capabilities right then. Sweat drenched his back, but his throat was dry. He recalled the ghostly mirage he and Czerny had invoked at the circle of stones. This was not his first supernatural encounter. Still, the thing before him was more frightening than anything he’d ever seen so far. The voices in his head were loud and urgent and more indistinct than ever. He tried to speak. “What-” His voice cracked. He licked his lips and tried again. “What do you want from me? How is this possible?”

“The ley line,” replied the Czerny-like thing. There was no indication to which question was being answered.

“I’m imagining you,” Whelk said, but he spoke with no conviction. He shut his eyes tightly, ignoring the spike of instinctual panic from losing visuals on a possible threat. “You’re not real. You can’t be here, you’re _gone._ ”

The apparition didn’t seem to understand this, because when Whelk opened his eyes, it was even closer, the ghoulish visage only a dozen inches from his own. “You wish,” whispered Czerny-but-not-Czerny.

Wildly, impulsively, driven by fear and anger, Whelk swung at the pale figure. Somehow, although the thing did not move, he missed. His fist had not gone through his target, but rather seemed to have jumped to the other side of it, like a glitch in a video game. A completed swing with the impact cut out of the middle.

“Do you really think,” said Czerny - for it looked like Czerny again - “You’ll be able to beat me to death a second time?”

“Get away from me,” Whelk spat as he stumbled back a few steps. His legs felt gelatinous. “Whatever you think you are, assuming to be someone- something that’s dead, stay away from me.”

“I have been, mostly,” Czerny said. He looked down at his hands, picked at the dirt under his nails. “It hurts me, too.”

Whelk glanced around the hall. For now they were alone, but the other faculty would start arriving any minute. He couldn’t let them see Czerny. He couldn’t let them find out what he’d done. “Why are you here,” Whelk hissed to his mistake. “Why don’t you just move on already.”

Czerny looked at him balefully.

Whelk tried to swallow, but there was a lump the size of a golf ball blocking his throat. “It wasn’t supposed to be for nothing,” he managed to say. It was the closest thing to an apology Noah would ever get. “The ley line cheated us.”

Softly, Czerny said, “The ley line doesn’t cheat. It gave you exactly as much as you gave it.”

“Are you saying that you’re just not worth much?”

Czerny stared at him with those excruciatingly empty eyes. They were like voids drilled into his skull. “I’m saying you didn’t care enough about me for it to mean much as a sacrifice.”

Pressure bubbled in Whelk’s chest cavity. His spit felt acidic; his hands were freezing. The truth stung his ears like a swarm of hornets. He’d liked Czerny, as much as somebody who only liked himself could like another person. He liked Czerny because he’d been useful, because he laughed at Whelk’s jokes and bounced ideas back to him and was happy to do whatever Whelk wanted to do. Czerny had been the closest thing Whelk ever had to a friend. That didn’t mean he wasn’t dispensable.

Czerny sighed, a small and pitiful sound, as if Whelk had just confirmed a suspicion.

“Tell me what I need to do,” Whelk said. “To wake the line. Whatever it is, I’ll do it. And I’ll use its power to bring you back.” He was surprised at himself to find he meant it. He never held true animosity for Czerny; Whelk had even missed him, sometimes. His plan might have been to take the line’s power for himself all along, but that didn’t mean Czerny had to stay dead. They could be a team again; Whelk with the power of the ley line and Czerny his faithful sidekick.

“Never.” By the look on Czerny’s face, it was almost as if he had read Whelk’s thoughts. “It still… I still meant something. Not for you, but for someone else.”

Whelk’s heart jumped. “What do you mean? Who?”

Czerny shook his head, then shook his hands. “You’re going to die, Whelk. You’re going to die.”

Whelk clenched his fists at his sides. Was this prophecy, or just the revenge-fueled nonsense of a murdered boy? “I’ll see you on the other side, then, Czerny,” he said stiffly.

Czerny wheezed. It was that breathless little chuckle of his. “I hope not.”

Whelk felt a bit of warmth return to his fingers. In the distance, he heard a door slam and heels click on tile. The other staff were arriving. “Then get out of here,” Whelk said, keeping his voice moderately low. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

With a strange look that mixed frustration and wistfulness, Czerny seemed to grow insubstantial before Whelk’s eyes. “Seven years,” he reprised, in a whisper. Then he was gone; vanished.

Whelk sighed in relief. He bent down to pick up his keys, then gave an awkward nod to the secretary who had just turned down the hall.

As he walked to his classroom, the droning of voices in his head buzzed a little louder. As always the words were indistinct, but for just a moment, he thought he heard the echo of Czerny. A chill traveled down his spine but he forced himself to keep walking.

“ _Murderer_...”


End file.
